On July 26, the European Union Delegation to Israel posted a promotional video highlighting the importance of EU-Israel relations. The film is narrated by Avishai Ivry, an Israeli journalist identified with the Right. Ivry’s involvement drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
Complaints from the Right included, “How dare you promote those who try to meddle in our society?” – referring to the massive European government funding of political organizations operating in Israel. The Left asked, “How dare you oppose foreign funding and simultaneously work for the EU?” – again highlighting European funding of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but this time condemning Ivry’s “hypocrisy” in disagreeing with the funding while also being paid to promote the EU.
The criticism, from both Left and Right, acutely reflects Israeli public discourse regarding the EU’s involvement in domestic affairs.
Beyond the partisan debate in Israel, the fringe anti-peace (and at times antisemetic) website Electronic Intifada discovered a number of Ivry’s past tweets against Palestinians.
Electronic Intifada demanded the EU remove the video, and indeed within 24 hours the film was removed. The EU’s stated reason – “We want no doubts that anything we do promotes the values the EU stands for.”
It thus appears that the EU is legitimately concerned when its public funds are distributed to individuals that contradict its values (or its image), so much so that it immediately acted on the demand made by the people who run a hate-filled website.
One might therefore imagine that if the EU was told that it was funding NGOs that contradict its values – such as groups that promote antisemitism – that they would immediately investigate and cease the funding.
To be sure, this phenomenon occurs. But the EU’s response has been quite different.

The international community fears that another intense round of violence and confrontation in the West Bank could, as in the past, threaten billions of dollars of investments in the Palestinian state-building project over the last decade. The international donor community remembers well when EU-funded premises, equipment, and PA infrastructure were flattened during the second intifada.
The EU, which is the biggest donor to the PA, has invested in the EU Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories (EUPOL COPPS), which prides itself on reforming and overhauling major elements of the Palestinian security establishment and enhancing effective policing.
From the political point of view, however, the mission has achieved little. Over the last decade, the mission has indeed carved the EU a niche in Palestinian security sector reform and increased its visibility in the Middle East peace process. Nevertheless, the EU's strategy to use EUPOL COPPS to pave the way for a democratic and viable Palestinian state by building its security capacities has fallen short.
While the EU generally refrains from supporting security services with a reputation for human rights abuse, such as the U.S.-sponsored Preventive Security agency and the General Intelligence Service of the PA, the EU-supported Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) has also been implicated in the excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrations.
If the current authoritarian backslide of the PA continues, the EU and its mission will be increasingly criticized for financing, professionalizing, and legitimizing a highly politicized and democratically unaccountable police force. This is far from the EU's envisioned approach to security sector reforms.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has long criticized those, like President Barack Obama, who refuse to use terms like “radical Islamic terrorism” in the wake of jihadist violence. By the same logic, President Donald Trump’s refusal on Saturday to specifically condemn by name those Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi white supremacists was also morally deficient.
Trump spoke of “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.” Both sides did include people who showed up armed and looking for a fight — but only one side suffered death and severe injury, and only one side showed up to protest the other. Moral equivalency did not belong in that moment. For proof, just read the reaction of white supremacists on social media: they thanked the president profusely for not condemning them by name.
Monday’s statement by Trump condemning Saturday’s racist, white supremacist provocateurs in Charlottesville seemed begrudging. Yes, he finally did condemn “the egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence” at the “Unite the Right” protests, and condemned “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” involved as thugs. But starting off by citing economic gains was a non-sequitur that appeared to minimize the evil of Americans killing Americans over political differences.
We believe that the deliberate decision to drive a car into a crowd of protesters was an act of domestic terrorism, and the end product of the pure hatred spewed by white nationalists. As the Simon Wiesenthal Center leadership said, “This murderous attack, resembles car rammings in Israel and Europe perpetrated by terrorists associated with ISIS and Hamas. It should be treated as a deliberate act of domestic terrorism.”
This was clear even before 32-year-old Heather Heyer was struck and killed.
On Friday night, torch-carrying bigots marched on the University of Virginia, making Nazi salutes, chanting “Jews will not replace us” and taunting counter-protesters with racist slurs.

Regarding last week’s events in Charlottesville, Va., consider the following propositions:
(1) James Alex Fields Jr., the young man who on Saturday, police say, rammed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd in Charlottesville, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others, was not a “domestic terrorist.”
(2) He was a fatherless, troubled individual who likely experienced economic disenfranchisement as a child of Kentucky and was moved to violence for motives about which we can only guess.
(3) The marchers who gathered in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee are not necessarily “alt-right.” After all, the alt-right movement encompasses a diverse spectrum of opinion, only some of it racist, and should not be tarred by the rhetoric or actions of a few.
(4) White people should feel no sense of responsibility because a tiny handful of so-called white “nationalists” and “supremacists” falsely claim to speak in their name.
(5) The blame for the events in Charlottesville does not lie with any particular group. Both sides bear their share of guilt and should have shown greater restraint.
(6) President Trump was right on Saturday to avoid stigmatizing any particular group in his remarks condemning violence and hatred. Doing so would unnecessarily elevate the profile of the angry losers and occasionally violent extremists who defame Americans and give them the P.R. victory they were seeking all along.
O.K., now here’s hoping you’re revolted by each of the six preceding points. Because, if you are, then maybe we can at last rethink the policy of euphemism, obfuscation, denial and semantic yoga that typified the Obama administration’s discussions of another form of terrorism.

What’s eroding in Portland is the quality Max Weber considered essential to a functioning state: a monopoly on legitimate violence. As members of a largely anarchist movement, antifascists don’t want the government to stop white supremacists from gathering. They want to do so themselves, rendering the government impotent. With help from other left-wing activists, they’re already having some success at disrupting government. Demonstrators have interrupted so many city-council meetings that in February, the council met behind locked doors. In February and March, activists protesting police violence and the city’s investments in the Dakota Access Pipeline hounded Mayor Ted Wheeler so persistently at his home that he took refuge in a hotel. The fateful email to parade organizers warned, “The police cannot stop us from shutting down roads.”
All of this fuels the fears of Trump supporters, who suspect that liberal bastions are refusing to protect their right to free speech. Joey Gibson, a Trump supporter who organized the June 4 Portland rally, told me that his “biggest pet peeve is when mayors have police stand down … They don’t want conservatives to be coming together and speaking.” To provide security at the rally, Gibson brought in a far-right militia called the Oath Keepers. In late June, James Buchal, the chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, announced that it too would use militia members for security, because “volunteers don’t feel safe on the streets of Portland.”
Antifa believes it is pursuing the opposite of authoritarianism. Many of its activists oppose the very notion of a centralized state. But in the name of protecting the vulnerable, antifascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assemble and which may not. That authority rests on no democratic foundation. Unlike the politicians they revile, the men and women of antifa cannot be voted out of office. Generally, they don’t even disclose their names.
Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like never before. As the president derides and subverts liberal-democratic norms, progressives face a choice. They can recommit to the rules of fair play, and try to limit the president’s corrosive effect, though they will often fail. Or they can, in revulsion or fear or righteous rage, try to deny racists and Trump supporters their political rights. From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland, the latter approach is on the rise, especially among young people.
Revulsion, fear, and rage are understandable. But one thing is clear. The people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Portland may consider themselves fierce opponents of the authoritarianism growing on the American right. In truth, however, they are its unlikeliest allies.

It's becoming so clear now why the war of words between SJWs and the new white nationalists is so intense. It isn't because they have huge ideological differences -- it's because they have so much in common. Both are obsessed with race, SJWs demanding white shame, the alt-right responding with white pride. Both view everyday life and culture through a highly racialised filter. SJWs can't even watch a movie without counting how many lines the black actor has in comparison with the white actor so that they can rush home and tumblr about the injustice of it all. Both have a seemingly boundless capacity for self-pity. Both are convinced they're under siege, whether by patriarchy, transphobia and the Daily Mail (SJWs) or by pinkos and blacks (white nationalists). Both have a deep censorious strain. And both crave recognition of their victimhood and flattery of their feelings. This is really what they're fighting over -- not principles or visions but who should get the coveted title of the most hard-done-by identity. They're auditioning for social pity. "My life matters! My pain matters! I matter!" The increasing bitterness and even violence of their feud is not evidence of its substance, but the opposite: it's the narcissism of small differences.

Israeli politicians and others took aim at US President Donald Trump for comments appearing to equate neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, with left-wing anti-fascist activists, rejecting his assertion that there were two sides to the story.
“There aren’t two sides,” Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, said in a Wednesday statement.
“When neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville and scream slogans against Jews and in support of white supremacy, the condemnation has to be unambiguous. They represent hate and evil. Anyone who believes in the human spirit must stand against them without fear.”
Despite condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis on Monday, Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his original statement from Saturday that equated the two groups of protesters, telling reporters that “both sides were to blame” for the deadly violence that unfolded at the neo-Nazi rally on Friday.
“You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” he said.

The head of the Anti-Defamation League said Tuesday the fatal car-ramming that claimed a young woman’s life in Charlottesville, Virginia resembled the kind of terror attacks Israel has long experienced.
Appearing on MSNBC, Jonathan Greenblatt was asked to explain the recruiting techniques that white nationalist groups use to attract more people to its cause.
“Extremism is a problem in any form,” he said. “Islamic extremists. Left-wing extremists. But right-wing extremists, like other fringe groups, they try to exploit disaffected young people at an early stage in their lives.”
At this point, he was interrupted by the show’s host, Stephanie Ruhle, who said the method Greenblatt was describing reminded her of Islamist terrorist organizations. “That sounds like the same description you hear when we talk about ISIS recruiters,” she said, using a common acronym for Islamic State.
Greenblatt agreed with Ruhle’s assessment. He went on to say that car rammings in particular have been a common practice for terrorists in the Middle East and Europe.

Yair Netanyahu, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's offspring, weighed in on the controversy swirling over the violent events in Charlottesville, deeming the extreme left a far bigger threat to Israel then the neo-Nazis due to the rising popular support they receive in among the American public.
"Let's put things in proportion." Netanyahu wrote on Facebook. "The neo-Nazis in Virginia hate me and my country, but they belong to the past. Their breathing is dying."
"However, the Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movements, who hate my country and America, are growing stronger and becoming dominant in US universities and in public life," added Netanyahu.
Condemnations were swift to pour in, with MK Mickey Rosenthal calling him 'Netanyahu Youth,' a spin off the notorious Hitler Youth. Rosenthal later retracted his remarks and apologized.
Netanyahu was responding to the recent events in Charlotteville , where white supremacists, many of them heavily armed and bearing Nazi flags, had descended on the town for a rally titled 'Unite the Right,' and were met by a radical 'Antifa' leftists.
Videos appeared to show the police standing off to the side as the violence raged between the two sides, only stepping in after 20-year-old James Fields, of Ohio barreled his silver Dodge Charger into a group protesting the rally and killing 32 year old Heather Heyer.

Admitting that they were a bit bewildered by the recent Nazi/White Nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and by President Trump’s silence over the incident, ISIS leaders have cautiously approached the president to check if he would be cool with their terror group holding a similar rally.
“I’ve spent all these years as an enemy of America trying to sneak into the country and pull off a secret attack,” one ISIS leader told The Mideast Beast. “But then I saw people holding Nazi flags and Confederate battle flags marching down the street, and I was like, well, maybe I could have just been more open about it?”
Following the outreach, Trump has noticeably softened his tone on radical Islamic extremism. After jihadists killed 18 civilians in an attack on a Burkina Faso café, Trump urged greater restraint from both terrorists and diners.

In addition to its government, which is hostile towards Israel, the 'neutral' Scandinavian country supported Hitler's Third Reich during WWII, so is it any wonder some of their descendants remain unequivocal anti-Semites?
Why am I not surprised by the anti-Jewish protest held last week in the town of Helsingborg in southern Sweden? I wrote "anti-Jewish" and not "anti-Israel" because the main slogans that were shouted there—such as "the Jews are offspring of apes and pigs"—have nothing to do with the Middle East. This is blatant anti-Semitism of the ugliest kind.
So why am I not surprised? Because in this Scandinavian country, with a prime minister like Stefan Löfven, and a foreign minister like Margot Wallström, anti-Semitic displays, all the more so anti-Israel, are not supposed to "knock us off our feet."
Sweden was the first country to recognize "Palestine," it contributes great sums of money to the Palestinian Authority, and its government is hostile towards Israel. Wallström herself makes no effort to hide the fact she loathes us. Two small reminders: In November 2015 she tied the ISIS terror attacks in Paris to "Palestinian desperation," and shortly after that—at the height of the wave of terrorism—she called for an investigation into allegations Israel carries out "extrajudicial killings" of Palestinians.
Even though one should not generalize—obviously, not all Swedes are anti-Semites or Israel haters—there is another reason why I'm not surprised by the anti-Semitic displays in Sweden.

Fusion is a television cable and satellite news and satire channel features news, lifestyle, pop culture, satire and entertainment aimed at English-speaking millennials. They refer to themselves as “The TV network for today’s young, diverse America.” They also own some of the most viral websites out there, including The Onion, Clickhole, and Gizmodo.
In other words, they are very influential among millennials.
I say all of this as an introduction to the following video put out by one of their websites (Splinter), which they also posted on the Fusion Facebook page: a laudatory piece on Reems bakery in Oakland.
Note how not only does the mural of terrorist Rasmea Odeh appear, but it is there, front and center, part of the theme of the story Baking Bread to Lift the Resistance.
While the story portrays resistance as fighting “Xenophobia and racism…on the rise in Trump’s America,” their glorification of the mural of terrorist Odeh conflates this “resistance” with palestinian terrorism, that has resulted in the murders of innocent people.
To add salt to the wounds, they have released this video only a few days after Odeh received her warm send-off.

The left-wing group Achvat Amim was exposed by right-wing watchdog Ad Kan as carrying out illegal demonstrations in Palestinian villages and provoking IDF soldiers, Channel 2 reported on Monday.
Achvat Amim, meaning Solidarity of Nations, under the wing of Masa Israel, which is a division of the Jewish Agency, offers 20-something Diaspora Jews a five-month program that promises a chance to “dig deep within the conflict and gain grassroots volunteer experiences,” according to the two-and-a-half minute video on its website.
In the video, the narrator introduces Achvat Amim to potential Masa Israel participants as “not your cookie cutter Israel program” over footage juxtaposing scenes of west Jerusalem, the Old City, Palestinian villages and the West Bank security barrier.
“It’s for people who are passionate about social justice. Achvat Amim doesn’t shy away from the conflict, instead participants work side by side with both Israelis and Palestinians and directly engage in the day to day realities of the occupation,” continues the narrator.
Opportunities to learn about the conflict and receive hands on experience volunteering with such left-wing groups as Ir Amim, Hand in Hand and the Palestine-Israel Journal are also included in the five-month experience.
However, video footage taken by members of Achvat Amim that was leaked to Ad Kan reveals members of Achvat Amim volunteering at the “Sumud Freedom Camp” – an illegal Palestinian camp in the South Hebron Hills that was established in May and lasted some 40 days. Footage shows participants involved with the reconstruction of this outpost and clashing with security personnel.

In recent months, Tourism Ministry officials have become determined to execute a plan to kill off the tour guide profession, or at least deal it a mortal blow by emptying its licensed status of any content. A new bill from Tourism Minister Yariv Levin spells the end of licensed tour guides by allowing unlicensed charlatans and "experts" on various subjects, mostly in their own eyes, to work as guides.
For about 50 years, the Tourism Ministry required tour guides working both with locals and foreign tourists to be licensed. In other words, they had to complete an expensive, yearslong course, pass tough government exams and renew their license every two years pending the completion of additional courses. Now the tourism minister wants to throw all that away.
Thousands of people have studied this delightful profession that combines a love of the country, its history, archaeology, and culture with instruction and the inculcation of values that usually gives local and foreign tourists something to remember. Some 12,000 licensed tour guides in Israel have completed these courses. Approximately half of them are actively working and supporting their families as guides.
It's important that the Tourism Ministry understand that for all these years, tour guides were and still are the smiling faces that greet tourists in Israel. For years, they've been the secret weapon in the Israeli tourism product. These aren't people who recite information they read on Wikipedia; they are experts, talented at their craft, and improving all the time. They stay abreast of new information and study new material as it comes out. They can make a tour or a hike come alive, infusing it with excitement. They are capable of giving values to the tourists and sparking a love for the country from within and support for the country from abroad.

Why did the Christian Science Monitor call Ilan Pappe a “historian,” and give him an unchallenged megaphone to malign Israel in an interview about his book, “The Biggest Prison on Earth,” (referring, of course, to Israel)?
Ilan Pappe is no “historian.”
But that’s not my opinion: it’s actually his.
Ilan Pappe has long acknowledged that he is not objective and cares little about factual accuracy. He readily admits that ideology drives his historical writings and statements. And his ideology can be simply summed up: Israel is illegitimate and should be the target of international sanctions until it is dismantled as a Jewish state.
In short, by his own admission he is an ideology driven advocate, which by its very definition, means he is not a historian. Actual professional historians are driven by a love for research regardless of what it may reveal, not by a specific agenda.
A “historian” driven by agenda (instead of objective research) is like a doctor who doesn’t believe in science, or a paleontologist who doesn’t believe in fossils. It is simply antithetical to the profession.

Early in April, the conservative news website the Blaze reported on a lesson plan about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict geared towards high school students on PBS' website. The lesson plan, titled, “Dying to be a Martyr,” includes video clips of interviews with three young Arab men who either committed terror bombings against Israelis or planned to commit them.
As the Blaze pointed out, “no instructions are provided telling teachers to denounce the radical claims made by Majdi [who participated in a terror attack that killed 17 people] and there are no other lesson plans describing the conflict from the point of view of the Israelis.”
The written materials that accompany the videos are also extremely one-sided, and prompt students to sympathize with the Palestinian side.
Shortly after the Blaze and a few others reported on the lesson plan, the (now-former) PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler wrote about the lesson plan and the coverage of it on his blog. Of the lesson plan itself, Getler wrote that, “my own reading of the lesson plan was that the overall tone it projected was more tilted toward understanding the plight of the Palestinians—which is very real—than to the impact, and especially the immorality, of suicide bombings as a recourse; that the most powerful elements were those bomber videos and that it was more focused on the drama of capturing the voices and desperation of the bombers than on the immorality of the act itself.”
Despite these comments from its own Ombudsman, PBS has neither removed the lesson plan nor altered the content.

Rasmea and her supporters have thrown up phony defense after defense to both the underlying bombing and the immigration charges, all designed to portray Rasmea as a victim. A summary of these false claims and the truth rebutting the claims was in my December 2012 Op-Ed in the Detroit News, Rasmea Odeh is no victim.
The following posts at Legal Insurrection, among others, methodically rebut the propaganda put out by Rasmea and her supporters:
While I’ve had a chance to tell the story of Rasmea and her supporters through various posts, I finally had a chance to tell the whole story on video in an interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. IPT also has done groundbreaking work on Rasmea, including a video series about the case.
My interview is 26 minutes long. Below the video in this post I break down the segments by topic, including screenshots and partial transcription.

The organizers of a racial justice march in Washington scheduled for next month are seeking to bring people together “united in our demands for racial equity and justice.”
But by scheduling the event for September 30, which this year falls on Yom Kippur, they’ve left many Jews who were eager to take part out in the cold.
The March for Racial Justice is a grassroots effort by a number of organizers who say they are dismayed that “US laws, policies and practices remain steeped in racism and white supremacy.”
But the date – the holiest day in the Jewish calendar – leaves many unable to take part, and they’re not happy.
Writing on the event’s Facebook page, Joy Davidoff said that “by planning this March on Yom Kippur, many of us will be unable to attend. This also sows seeds of controversy at a time when we must unite. I beg the organizers to change the date.”
Lisa Miller also chimed in, noting that “in Charlottesville Nazis were screaming out against Jews. To not even acknowledge this date is disgusting. They are alienating us.” Dozens more expressed similar sentiments.

Jewish actress Mayim Bialik called out the March for Racial Justice for taking place on Yom Kippur.
In a Facebook post Sunday, Bialik complained that the timing of the march against white supremacy, scheduled for Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C., excludes Jews, who traditionally spend Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, fasting and praying.
“anyone else think that’s absurd?,” she wrote in a mostly lowercase text. “i mean, it automatically excludes a distinct portion of people who historically have stood up for racial equality in enormous ways.”
Bialik, a star of “The Big Bang Theory” TV sitcom who publicly embraces her Jewish identity and practice, doubted that the scheduling was an oversight, saying “And trust me: it’s on every calendar they checked before setting the date.”
Earlier Sunday, March for Racial Justice organizers posted their own statement on Facebook in which they apologized for the “scheduling conflict” and voiced appreciation for the Jews’ history of progressive activism. They repeatedly singled out Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who famously marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. (h/t Yerushalimey)

“The DC Justice March will take place on September 30 as scheduled, on the anniversary of the race riots of 1919,” the organizers wrote in a statement. “However, if Jews agree to stay away from the march, we will give due consideration to switching the date.”
“It was perhaps a mistake not to make this offer at the outset instead of scheduling the march without consultation,” the statement continued. “We apologize for that oversight. But the fact remains, we and the movement we represent have never been comfortable with Jews. Are they white? Are they people of color? Can we put them in a convenient conceptual box? The answers to those questions are unclear. Jewish lore has always emphasized ambiguity over certainty, and that is an intolerable position for a movement that values ideological purity, clarity, and unquestioning adherence to the tenets of progressivism.”
“Additionally, the suffering of Jews has always posed a problem for progressives, since so much Jewish suffering has taken place at the hands of leftist movements and the allies they keep,” they further stated, “even though Jews were prominent in the development of those movements. We prefer not to be reminded of our heritage of perfidy toward Jews, and therefore insist on excluding Jews from our midst.”
“We’re still OK with accepting generous funding from Jews and Jewish organizations, though, so keep that coming,” they concluded.

I have written about the virulently anti-semitic Muslims in Calgary organization before. In a bizarre bit of politically correct madness the Local Hate Arbitrator decreed that publishing excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion among other equally vile and widely held Muslim beliefs about Jews wasn’t a hate crime at all! Nor was their more recent hate screed against the Ahmadiyya.
With that background it’s no surprise that they would publish an article extolling the benefits of Female Genital Mutilation and of course find room to blame the Jewish controlled media for bad mouthing this barbaric practice. But then again this is Justin’s Canada and this is mainstream Islam.
The article is entitled “Female Circumcision in Islam” and is subtitled “How Misogynists and Feminists are feeding upon each other to denigrate an Islamic practice that brings untold benefits to women”.

A fanatical neo-Nazi Australian group that advertises itself as “the Hitlers you’ve been waiting for” has embarked on a campaign to plaster schools in the city of Melbourne with violently racist and antisemitic images and slogans.
The posters were discovered over the weekend at three Melbourne schools. “Luckily the teachers got there first to cover them up,” a cleaner at one of the schools told local broadcaster 3AW.
The posters — the work of a Nazi youth organization that styles itself the “Antipodean Resistance” — used ugly racist pejoratives to denigrate black and Asian people and call for the extermination of Jews. One poster depicted the classic Nazi image of a grasping, hook-nosed Jew alongside the words “Multiculturalism,” “Degeneracy” and “Reject Jewish Poison.”
The same group was behind what it described as a “prank” targeting students of Chinese origin at the University of Melbourne and Monash University in December. Students arriving at the campuses were confronted with posters reading, “Attention! This is a place that prohibits Chinese people to enter. Any offence is subject to prosecution or possible deportation.” One of the Nazi media outlets that lavished attention on these antics was the US-based Daily Stormer, which lost its web-hosting rights following last weekend’s violent neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.

The museum at Auschwitz criticized a right-wing television station in Warsaw that adapted the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” sign above the gates of the Nazi death camp into an illustration for a story about German reparations.
The illustration for the story on Republika TV about the call by some Polish lawmakers for Germany to compensate Poland for its losses in World War II changed the words of the Auschwitz sign from “Work sets you free” to “Reparations set you free.”
Following complaints, Republika removed the graphic from its Twitter account but not from its website.
“The primitive manipulation of painful symbols shows the moral level and understanding of history by its authors,” the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said Monday on its Twitter account.
Social media users also criticized the graphic.

The Swiss foreign ministry said it told Israel’s ambassador that it condemns anti-Semitism, after a sign in a hotel telling Jewish guests to shower before using the pool sparked anger.
Swiss foreign ministry spokesman Tilman Renz told AFP in an email that the ministry had been in contact with Israeli Ambassador to Switzerland Jacob Keidar and had “outlined to him that Switzerland condemns racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination in any form.”
The denunciation from the Swiss foreign ministry came after Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely demanded “a formal condemnation” from Bern over the incident, saying that the removal of the signs after Keidar contacted the hotel was not sufficient.
The Paradies apartment hotel in the Alpine village of Arosa in eastern Switzerland has been under fire for alleged anti-Semitism after an outraged guest posted to Facebook a picture of a notice plastered outside the hotel pool.

A senior state historian in Poland is seeking the exhumation of bodies of Jews murdered by Polish villagers, citing a witness whom he said claims that Germans organized the slaughter.
Krzysztof Krasowski, a leader of the regional office of the Institute of National Remembrance, or IPN, in Białystok, last month sent the request for exhumation in the village of Jedwabne to his organization’s headquarters in Warsaw, the PAP news agency reported Wednesday, citing the testimony of an 89-year-old woman identified in the Polish media only as Antonina K.
The 1941 massacre at Jedwabne, where according to historians from IPN and beyond at least 340 Jews were butchered by the neighbors amid a power vacuum following Germany’s invasion into Poland, became a highly polarizing issue in Poland since 2001, when historian Jan Gross published a groundbreaking book about it.
Revisionist historians and nationalistic activists who insist that Poles were merely victims of Nazi savagery who never perpetrated atrocities against Jews have disputed the findings by Gross, a Princeton professor, and others, alleging the massacre was either perpetrated or orchestrated by Germans.
The campaign to exhume bodies at Jedwabne intensified following Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party’s rise to power in the 2015 elections. However, leading historians for IPN had not formally pressed for an exhumation prior to Krasowski’s request. Last year, Jedwabne’s mayor added his voice to those demanding an exhumation.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, working with Amsterdam University, have come to an important scientific conclusion: Emojis are bad for you.
Specifically, they’re bad for you in a work setting. BGU’s new study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science reveals that sliding in that smiley emoticon, while well-intentioned, is likely to undermine you professionally. While a real life smile is likely to make people in the workplace both like and trust you, an ersatz one made of punctuation marks can have an adverse effect. (Emojis and emoticons seem to be used interchangeably here, though traditionally, the former refers to thumbnail images you add from a mobile device, and the latter refers to putting together keyboard symbols that they seem to represent a thing or feeling.)
Lest you think that this study only speaks to the emotional brusqueness that Israelis often exude, BGU used participants (549 of them) from 29 different countries. The basic experiment was showing participants similar emails, some with emojis, some without. (They weren’t told anything about the age or gender of the user, but they tended to assume emoticon users were female, because of course they did.)
Participants were then asked to evaluate the work emails and rate the email sender on scales of both “competence” and “warmth.” So, even if smileys make you seem less professional, at least people will think you’re nice, right?
Wrong. Using emoticons or emojis certainly lowered the competency rating of email composers, but it didn’t move the warmth rating one way or another. The same thing happened in another experiment in the study that was meant to test for perceptions of competence or friendliness: Competence suffered, and friendliness was unchanged.
Workplace emoji users: You’re sacrificing professionalism for nothing!

The first international aid arrived in Sierra Leone on Tuesday after Israel sent enough food for 10,000 meals for the thousands displaced by the deadly mudslides in the West African country.
Israel’s Ambassador to West Africa Paul Hirschson, who has been tasked with coordinating Israeli assistance in Sierra Leone, tweeted that he was “proud to say” the food was the first international aid to arrive in the country, along with an image of thousands of tins of baked beans.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon also tweeted an image of other packages of food sent by Israel that had arrived in Sierra Leone, adding that the initial shipment was enough for 10,000 meals.
Israel has also promised to send in further assistance, including medical assistance and other help depending on the needs of Sierra Leone, where more than 300 people have died in the flooding and mudslides.

By all accounts, Eilon Bdil has no personal interest in marijuana.
But as the business manager of Kibbutz Elifaz, he’s a big believer in the herb. Bdil sees medical marijuana as a unique opportunity to revive his remote Negev community.
“This cannabis gold rush has to pan out for us,” he said. “There’s simply no other choice. We need young people with good minds to come here, and medical cannabis is what can draw them.”
Elifaz is one of dozens of kibbutzim – and hundreds of local companies — seeking to join Israel’s new medical marijuana industry. After decades of stagnation, the collectives are betting that the move can revitalize their finances and even their way of life.
Israel’s gold rush – or “green rush,” as some are calling it – took off after the government in February threw its support behind legislation that would allow the export of medical marijuana. An inter-ministerial’s committee’s set up to explore the issue recently recommended favor of export, though Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is opposed.
The Knesset is expected to pass the measure into law in the coming months. If that happens, Israeli companies would suddenly have access to a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar global industry.

Romeu's Story
What happened when an LGBTQ activist from Europe sought out answers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Here is Romeu's story:

The true story of an Italian teenager who helped smuggle Jews over the Alps during World War II will be getting the Hollywood treatment from the same team behind Spider-Man.
According to Deadline.com, Mark Sullivan's novel, Beneath a Scarlet Sky, which is based on a true story, is being adapted as a motion picture. Amy Pascal, who produced the latest Spider-Man film, has reportedly acquired the film rights to the novel, and tapped actor Tom Holland to play the lead role.
Holland, who has been playing Spider-Man for Marvel Comics since 2015, has been praised as a break-out star.
Sullivan's novel follows the real-life story of Pino Lella, an Italian teenager who joined an underground railroad during World War II. He helped Jews escape to freedom as Nazi forces closed in.
But Lella's parents were terrified for his safety, and thought he would be kept out of combat if he enlisted as a German soldier. He ended up becoming the personal driver for General Hans Leyers, one of Hitler's top commanders in Italy. Lella then had the opportunity to spy for the Allies from inside the top ranks of the German army.
Sullivan's novel, which was published in May, has received many positive reviews and become a quick best-seller.

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French children's magazine Youpi published this in its latest edition. The translation is "We call these 197 countries state...

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون

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